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Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

These are moves in the wrong direction: Google needs more distinctive brands, not fewer.

While the multi-brand strategy didn't work for Yahoo, Yahoo had many other integration/prioritization problems.

The fact that YouTube had a different, more-market-appropriate name than 'Google Video' was important for its identity and success. (Or is Google going to rename YouTube to "Google+ Video", now?)

'Blogger' is a uniquely-interesting brand for them to throw away. If launched today, the word would almost be too generic for trademark protection. But its history practically grandfathers it in: its popularity was part of the mechanism by which 'blog' became a generic term.

'Google Blogs'? Blah.

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Weak brands dilute the core brand in saturated markets.

Perfect branding lies in the sweet spot between unique and recognizable (or self-explanatory for domains, see my post on this http://t.co/ecbsWcp), but it depends on mindshare.

"GMail" is in the sweet spot between the faceless title "Google Mail" and the unrecognisable "Jabberwocky". YouTube won the mindshare landrush for consumer video and became a household brand name. Rebranding it would be dumb.

Picasa, on the other hand, is similar to "Google Reader" in that it solves a smaller problem in a highly crowded market. Smaller brands with multiple competitors strengthen the core "Google" brand by living under the umbrella as "GPhoto", "Google Brush" or "Google Reader", for example.

Would like to hear counter-points.

It's a bit older, but the book "Positioning" takes a pretty hard line against "line extension":

> From the prospect’s point of view, line extension works against the generic brand position. It blurs the sharp focus of the brand in the mind. No longer can the prospect say “Bayer” if he or she wants aspirin. Or “Dial” for soap. In a sense, line extension educates the prospect to the fact that Bayer is nothing but a brand name. It destroys the illusion that Bayer is a superior form of aspirin. Or that Dial is deodorant soap rather than just a brand name for a deodorant soap

http://t.co/0mPeBsf

Is this still relevant these days? I think their argument has some merit.

So does the book "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" ( http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/dp... ).

It essentially claims that a brand should not try to be all things to all people. Different brands, however, can. For a good discussion, see: http://www.codemyownroad.com/circumventing-the-law-of-line-e...

Edit: I see the book is written by the same author. Probably no coincidence.

Yeah, I think I've read about a dozen of his books. But there's also such thing as "halo effect" (I think there's a book on this, too). Take the "i" letter for all Apple products now. It works the same way.

The halo effect makes it so all the children products benefit from the main product's influence, but it can also work the other way around, so they have to be very careful not to brand a crappy product like that, because then it will end up affecting all the others in a negative way.

It's also very important that they keep re-inventing themselves at least every 10 years (like Google is doing now). Because otherwise they risk becoming "the product my dad used", or uncool like that. Who thinks Yahoo is still cool now? 13-14 years ago they were "the Internet".

I know absolutely nothing about marketing so I may be wrong, but the problem I immediately see with this is that one can only make so much money selling aspirin or soap. I assume that at a certain point these brands realized that the brand name was more valuable in terms of the credibility and instant recognizability it could lend a larger array of products than its value attached to a single one, even if the name is affected negatively in the context of that single product.

The authors recognize that. The problem is that line extended products don't connect to the things you have associated yourself with in the customer's mind. If Dial makes body wash...line extension is probably acceptable. If Dial makes toothpaste, deodorant, or snack food the connection of Dial <=> soap isn't there as strongly.

They make the point that in long run you're diluting your brand. You can only occupy one particular place in someone's mind with a single brand. Owning that position is valuable. Owning 'they do everything' is not really a winner. That feels like 'they do nothing well.'

Interestingly, they do make toothpaste and deodorant, but under different brands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henkel

Yep. There are plenty of counter-examples of companies that set up different brand names that become stronger than a shared brand could ever be. For example, Unilever has many strong brand names: http://unilever.com/brands/?WT.GNAV=Our_brands

Large breweries often have many different brands that are perceived differently by people.

It's hard to build a strong brand name, but if you can pull it off and avoid line extension, it's the better way.

I think these brand examples aren't very apt. A better comparison is Craftsman from Sears. They make a crap load of tools from wrenches to weed whackers, but all of them benefit from the quality Craftsman brand aura. So when Sears developed/bought those new wacky auto-hammers they branded them under the Craftsman label.

I don't think that for Sears' target market, you want to own something as narrow as "wrenches" in people's minds. You want to own "tools", so having a fairly wide array of them probably isn't damaging.

One of the two books, Positioning or Immutable Laws of Marketing, also mentioned that the companies that have switched their positioning have destroyed their existing brand and recreated it in a different way.

I think that Google and all the major tech companies are re-positioning themselves as technology companies rather than search, ecommerce, hardware, etc.

To me personally the examples make sense, but don't anymore if I replace Bayer with Google I my mind (or Apple for that matter). The reason is that Aspirin is a commonality. There is no better or worse Aspirin. With web search on the other hand this is not true.

I think that's true for each of the products, and even the set of products taken as a whole, but perhaps not from the perspective of trying to use them as a captive audience to jump-start Google+. My read (perhaps wrong) is that Google thinks getting into the social-network game is important enough that they're willing to make moves that from other products' perspectives are negative, in order to achieve it.

The Strategy Tax!

I really wish I could see an upvote count on this. I agree with the parent, but I think this is an interesting perspective--one worth thinking about. I'm really curious whether other people agree.

Indeed. To me this sounds very much of a piece with any of the routine bullshit "stragetic positioning" and "synergistic realignments" that typical brain-dead mega-corps do all the time. Even today nobody asks where to find the nearest FedEx Office, they want to know where a Kinko's is, years after the brand has allegedly been killed.

Joel Spolsky had it nailed the best, these sorts of moves are a "strategy tax" on big companies.

When I hear Blogger, I think spam.

From http://www.gplusinfo.com/google-will-retire-blogger-and-pica...

"Google has said that YouTube will remain as is."

I'm not surprised that they aren't rebranding YouTube (it's pretty much the most recognizable website title in the world, way more than Blogger IMO), though I continue to be surprised that they haven't integrated it more by including the horizontal google-bar at the top and doing something about merging YouTube and regular google accounts.

" including the horizontal google-bar at the top "

I believe this would just make everything too complicated than it needs to be for the average user; besides, the likelyhood is that the user already uses Google, so there's no need for Google to try and reel users in via a search applet (that would probs make YouTube look ugly).

And, aren't Google Accounts already merged with YouTube Accounts ?

Good point on the top bar. I still have a YouTube account that I'm almost positive wouldn't log me in to anything besides YouTube, maybe that's not true or maybe its just because I'm grandfathered in.

In March Google announced that all YouTube accounts had to be migrated to Google Accounts: http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-connecting-yo...

You can still avoid it if you really want to. My account is now a google account but my flatmates youtube account is still separate. They keep bugging him but he keeps dodging it, wont agree to the new terms.

I would guess there is a limit to how long he will be able to dodge. At some point there will only be an agree button.

I agree that the Google brand feels old, and is too diluted already. I would keep the "Google x" name for search related products, and, use "Google+X" for user-centric products.

It would be more consistent, and would passively, but massively, promote Google+.

I would also gradually phase out the old brands in order to prevent the user revolt that's to be expected from such a brutal change.

    {title:Picasa, theme:Picasa}
    {title:Picasa, subtitle:Google+Photos, theme:Picasa}
    {title:Google+Photos, subtitle:Picasa, theme:Google+Photos}
    {title:Google+Photos, theme:Google+Photos}

I'm surprised they didn't just rename it Google Blogger. Are those 2 letters really going to destroy what they are trying to achieve with this?

three letters :P but good point. They're trying to put everything under the 'Google+ Umbrella'.

They are replacing the 'ger' with 's' so its only saving 2 characters!

never mind! I'm tired... :)

hell no, its the best thing they can do. everyone saying that this didnt work for yahoo oder microsoft are just picking companies where something failed but not necessarily ou of this reason. should i now list every xompany in the world that has a strong corporate identity and design and is successful? its basically every successful company. this is stuff that works and that is good.

i want my google services with one brand and one design. i click through my services and everthing looks completely different, this is what is really wrong.

so: go on goole!

Dial-up AOL had a unity of design you might have liked.

And it's your opinion that AOL failed because of that!?

I'd argue that AOL failed despite that.

(i've never really used AOL)

I agree. This approach hasn't exactly worked out all that well over at microsoft.

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